The Hemingway personality has become a familiar stereotype in contemporary folklore, but its influence on the American screen has not been readily apparent. Although the novelist's protagonists—disillusioned outcasts indulging in sensory sensations for the sake of experience—have emerged as prototypes for the characters who inhabit the specific genre of dimly-lit melodramas of the American underworld, the crucial elements of the Hemingway style are less frequently encountered in modern drama. The ruthless excision of non-essentials for the purpose of lucidity and unity, although Aristotleian in concept, imposes complex demands upon a medium which is primarily visual, while the insistence upon the principles of courage, pity and honour as the only extant values which cannot be wholly distorted by the process of living in the contemporary wasteland presents a difficult problem for an industry geared to more acceptable ethical standards. In a medium dedicated to the synonymous relationship...